The Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Butler Joseph

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      1. There was then no course of nature, as to this world.

      2. Whether man then received a revelation involves a question not of miracles, but of fact.

      3. Creation was a very different exertion of power from that which rules the world, now it is made.

      4. Whether the power of forming stopped when man was made; or went on, and formed a religion for him, is merely a question as to the degree or extent, to which a power was exerted.

      5. There is then no presumption from analogy against supposing man had a revelation when created.

      6. All tradition and history teaches that he had, which amounts to a real and material proof.

      1. Such a presumption, requires the adduction of some parallel case.

      2. This would require us to know the history of some other world.

      3. Even then, if drawn from only one other world, the presumption would be very precarious.

      To be more particular,

      1. There is a strong presumption against any truth till it is proved – which yet is overcome by almost any proof.

      – Hence the question of a presumption against miracles, involves only the degree of presumption, (not whether the presumption is peculiar to miracles,) and whether that degree is such as to render them incredible.

      2. If we leave out religion, we are in total darkness as to the cause or circumstances on which the course of nature depends.

      – Five or six thousand years may have given occasion and reasons for miraculous interpositions of Providence.

      3. Taking in religion, there are distinct reasons for miracles; to afford additional instruction; to attest the truth of instruction.

      4. Miracles must not be compared with common events, but with uncommon; earthquakes, pestilence, &c.

      1. There are no analogies to render miracles incredible.

      2. On the contrary, we see good reasons for them.

      3. There are no presumptions against them, peculiar to them, as distinguished from other unusual phenomena.

      1. If both these schemes, the physical and the moral, coincide and form one whole, then our inability to criticise the system of nature, renders it credible that we are incompetent to criticise the system of grace.

      2. Nature shows many things we should not have expected, prior to experience.

      3. Hence it is altogether likely it would be so in religion.

      4. If a citizen is incompetent to judge of the propriety of the general laws of his government, he is equally incompetent to judge when and how far those laws should be suspended, or deviated from.

      1. We are not able to judge how much new knowledge ought to be given by revelation.

      2. Nor how far, nor in what way, God should qualify men to transmit any revelation he might make.

      3. Nor whether the evidence should be certain, probable, or doubtful.

      4. Nor whether all should have the same benefit from it.

      5. Nor whether it should be in writing, or verbal. If it be said that if not in writing it would not have answered its purpose: I ask, what purpose? Who knows what purposes would best suit God’s general government?

      6. All which shows it to be absurd to object to particular things in revelation as unsuitable.

      1. No obscurities, &c. could overthrow the authority of a revelation.

      2. It can only be overthrown by nullifying the proofs.

      3. Though the proofs could be shown to be less strong than is affirmed, it still should control our conduct.

      1. We are competent judges of common books, but not of Scripture.

      2. Our only inquiry should be to find out the sense.

      3. In other books, internal improbabilities weaken external proof; but in regard to revelation, we scarcely know what are improbabilities.

      1.) Those who judge the Scripture by preconceived expectations, will imagine they find improbabilities.

      2.) And so they would by thus judging in natural things.

      – It would seem very improbable, prior to experience, that man should be better able to determine the magnitudes and motions of heavenly bodies, than he is to determine the causes and cures of disease, which much more nearly concerns him.

      – Or that we should sometimes hit upon a thing in an instant, even when thinking of something else, which we had been vainly trying to discover for years.

      – Or that language should be so liable to abuse, that every man may be a deceiver.

      – Or that brute instinct should ever be superior to reason.